Jaroslav Kovář (12 May 1934 – 14 February 2015) was a Czech track and field athlete who competed in the high jump for Czechoslovakia. He was the bronze medallist at the 1954 European Athletics Championships, behind his teammate Jiří Lanský. [1] [2] He set a lifetime best of 2.06 m (6 ft 9 in) in his native Prague in 1957. [3] He was highly successful in student competitions, taking gold at the 1954 World Student Games and a gold and a silver at the World Festival of Youth and Students. [4]
The Czech Republic, also known by its short-form name, Czechia, is a landlocked country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west, Austria to the south, Slovakia to the east and Poland to the northeast. The Czech Republic covers an area of 78,866 square kilometres (30,450 sq mi) with a mostly temperate continental climate and oceanic climate. It is a unitary parliamentary republic, with 10.6 million inhabitants; its capital and largest city is Prague, with 1.3 million residents. Other major cities are Brno, Ostrava, Olomouc and Pilsen. The Czech Republic is a member of the European Union (EU), NATO, the OECD, the United Nations, the OSCE, and the Council of Europe.
Track and field is a sport which includes athletic contests established on the skills of running, jumping, and throwing. The name is derived from the sport's typical venue: a stadium with an oval running track enclosing a grass field where the throwing and some of the jumping events take place. Track and field is categorized under the umbrella sport of athletics, which also includes road running, cross country running, and race walking.
The high jump is a track and field event in which competitors must jump unaided over a horizontal bar placed at measured heights without dislodging it. In its modern most practised format, a bar is placed between two standards with a crash mat for landing. In the modern era, athletes run towards the bar and use the Fosbury Flop method of jumping, leaping head first with their back to the bar. Since ancient times, competitors have introduced increasingly effective techniques to arrive at the current form.
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He was a three-time national champion, winning the Czechoslovak title three years straight from 1955 to 1957. He used the eastern cut-off technique pioneered by Michael Sweeney before moving on to the straddle technique. He graduated from Prague's Faculty of Physical Education and Sport and later became an athletics coach. Amongst his charges were national record breakers Jaroslav Alexa, Rudolf Baudis, Josef Hrabal, Jindřich Vondra and Ján Zvara. He was also coach to women's high jumpers Jaroslava Valentová, Alena Prosková and Věra Bradáčová. Later in his career he trained Zuzana Hlavoňová, Tomáš Janků, Svatoslav Ton, Iva Straková and Oldřiška Marešová. [5]
The eastern cut-off is a variant of the "scissors" high jump style involving a layout. This enables the jumper to clear a higher bar than with the traditional scissors style, while still landing on the feet. The technique is generally credited to Michael Sweeney of the New York Athletic Club, who used it in 1895 to set a world record of 6 ft 5 5/8 inches . The style came to be called "eastern" because of its origin on the US east coast, after the invention of the rival "western roll" style by George Horine on the west coast (Stanford). Horine was in fact the first to improve on Sweeney's record, when he cleared 6 ft 7 inches in 1912.
Michael Sweeney was an Irish-American track and field athlete. He was the high jumping world champion in 1892 and 1895. He was also the professional athletics champion at the 1900 Paris Olympics in the 100-meter dash, the high jump, and the long jump.
The straddle technique was the dominant style in the high jump before the development of the Fosbury Flop. It is a successor of the Western roll, with which it is sometimes confused.
